


Dry-Fire

by heartshapeddog



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Angst, Cabin Fic, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Masturbation, Mentions of canon-typical violence, Mutual Pining, Resolved Sexual Tension, Trust Kink, bamf!otacon, bamf!otacon?, dave has big thot energy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 10:09:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20190556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapeddog/pseuds/heartshapeddog
Summary: “Do you think people are really capable of change?” he’d asked of Hal, pretending at docility with his cable-knit sweater and his house shoes, blood still drying beneath his nails in gritty crescent moons.Between MGS1 and MGS2. Snake angsts about his genetic fate. Otacon helps him through it with healthy emotional discussions but also some pretty kinky stuff.





	Dry-Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [berlynn_wohl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlynn_wohl/gifts), [AzuralikesCoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AzuralikesCoffee/gifts).

> Big big thanks to @azuralikescoffee for her dedicated beta work on this, and to @Berlynn_wohl for dragging the MGS fishing net behind her on her voyages which allowed me, a haplessly flopping sea creature, to come along for the ride.

“You look ridiculous in that parka.”

Otacon blinked up at him, owlish behind his frosted-over glasses.

“Can I come in?” He asked, jaw clenched against the cold. His cheeks were red with wind-chill and exertion in equal measure. Snake tucked him under his arm to help him slip through the narrow doorway - if the wind caught it, he’d need to wrestle it closed again.

It was dark inside, a primal comfort. Snake kept Otacon close for a moment too long, feeling the shape of his back under the thick parka and letting the fur-lined hood tickle his chin.

“You hike all the way out here?” he asked, gruff. Otacan squirmed away enough to begin stripping off his layers, already sweating out. The cabin wasn’t warm by usual standards, but the differential was enough to confuse his body.

“Snowmobiled partway, hiked up the last ten. Figured the storm will cover my tracks pretty quick once it sets in.”

“Smart,” Snake admitted. He’d been ready to chastise him for coming out, and now had no convenient or reasonable excuse for his irritation. The sight of Hal’s discarded boots beside his own pair at the doorway made his throat tighten.

Otacon was down to his base layer now, a tight thermal shirt, his parka peeled down to his waist. His shoulders were less rounded, though still as slender as Snake recalled. Without asking, he schlepped his backpack over to the coffee table and started to set up his laptop.

“Make yourself at home,” Snake grumbled, but went to light the stove for some hot water. By the time he’d returned, Otacon had something pulled up on the screen. The couch springs sagged and groaned dangerously under the weight of the both of them.

“This is from a Russian darkweb site,” he explained. It did nothing to help Snake make sense of what he was looking at, or why.

“A blueprint,” he inferred. “Of what?”

Otacon scrolled along the images until the shapes started to coalesce into something familiar.

“Metal Gear?”

“That’s right. I found these three days ago, less than 24 hours after upload. And I’m certainly not the only one.”

Snake ran through the timeline - three days from New York to Alaska. Otacon must have closed up his laptop and hailed a cab straight to LaGuardia. He didn’t have any other luggage with him.

“Even the most resource-rich organizations couldn’t build Metal Gear in less than a year,” Otacon continued. “Which gives us our timeline to track them down.”

“To do what?” Snake blurted. He was still stuck on the concept of Otacon stepping out of his apartment with only a backpack and the intense need to see him.

“We’re going to destroy them.” Otacon’s expression knocked him breathless - his face was fierce and lovely at once. His knee was also very close to Snake’s thigh. Snake thought the rising whistle in his ears was his own blood for a moment.

The kettle was an excellent excuse to collect his thoughts. Otacon followed him into the kitchen, expectant. Snake handed him a hot mug of instant coffee, hoping that having to drink it would keep him from talking for a few minutes.

“The question isn’t whether or not I’ll help,” he said. “You know I will. So what are you asking me?”

“I knew you would, that’s true. I just didn’t believe it, somehow,” Otacon laughed. His shoulders hunched self-consciously, giving Snake a weird sense of deja vu. A layline back to who Otacon had been half a year ago.

“We make a great team. Probably still do.”

“That’s why I came to you. Couldn’t do this with anyone else.”

On principal, Snake wasn’t susceptible to manipulation, emotional or otherwise. Hal’s naked honesty was dangerously compelling.

“I’m all yours.”

The weather had forced Snake to nix the generator for now - it was firelight by way of practicalities, fat white emergency candles and the banked hearth. Hal was bent over a carefully numbered grid of notebook paper spread out over the floor, sketching mindmaps and plans, frustrated by the slowness of analogue methods.

“Philanthropy,” Snake tried. “That’s what we’re doing, aren’t we?”

Across the top of the center page, all-caps, he wrote ‘PHILANTHROPY’.

“You’re actually going with that?” Snake grunted.

“‘That’s what we’re doing, aren’t we?’ Besides, the U.N. will like it - very wholesome.”

“Wholesome,” Snake parroted. “Should we move on to the plan where we illegally acquire military equipment?”

Otacon flipped the flimsy plastic pen at him, and rolled his eyes when Snake decisively intercepted it.

“You just want to get to the part you’re best at,” he teased. “You’re good for more than sneaking around, you know.”

Snake smirked. “I’m good for a lot of things, Hal.”

“Whatever. I’m making more coffee. Do you want any, Dave?”

He grunted affirmatively. Hal was back within minutes with two steaming mugs, one of which he brought directly to Dave’s hands.

“It’s hot,” he warned.

Dave wanted to laugh at him. “Watch out, Snake!”

“Dickhead,” Hal muttered, grinning into his cup. “Someone’s gotta look out for you.”

Snake thought somewhat inevitably of the Colonel and Master Miller.

“If we’re doing this, no secrets,” he said. The surface of the coffee made a dark mirror in which he saw his distorted face. “I don’t want to be jerked around by my support any more.”

“Do you really think I’d do that to you?” Hal asked.

“I don’t think you’re capable of it,” Snake replied. He wasn’t sure himself if that was meant to be a compliment or an insult. “But I thought I’d say something.”

“No secrets,” Hal agreed. “You’re putting a lot of faith in me. I think you’re owed that, at least.”

“What are you owed, then?”

“For what? Believing that decorated war hero Solid Snake can do a few covert missions with minimal backup, like it’s Tuesday?” Hal scoffed.

“You’ve seen me snap necks twice as thick as yours,” Dave couldn’t help saying. Like he was trying to talk him out of it. Like he needed Otacon to know what he was capable of, the only thing he truly was good for. The thing he was genetically engineered for, the fate coded into his very cells.

“I don’t have to like it. But if it’s you or them--”

“What if I did like it?” Snake pushed.

“Do you?” Otacon asked, unsteady. Here it was, Snake thought. The moment Hal realized what exactly he’d be unleashing by setting Snake loose in military bases and terrorist hideouts.

“I’ve never felt more alive than in the field,” he said. It was the truth. “What do you think?”

“I think you need something better to live for,” Hal said, hard-eyed. “I think we have that thing now.”

Dave laughed. It wasn’t pretty. “You sure know how to talk a guy into some shit.”

“Better shit than you’ve been up to, I’m sure.”

His last fifth of brandy was a stain in the snow off the back porch. Couldn’t smoke in here with Hal around.

After the quiet had turned thick around them, Hal asked him, “What were you doing all this time?”

Dave didn’t have an answer that didn’t sound pathetic.

“Trying not to go soft.”

In the days after Shadow Moses, they had shared Dave’s bed. It was by necessity - he didn't have enough firewood for anything useful, and they mutually agreed to conserve the propane. His dogs piled into bed with them, a soothing jumble of flicking ears, wet-nosed whuffling, and twitching paws. Hal’s back was sharp-edged against his, the soft rush of his breath so unfamiliar that Dave could hardly sleep.

He recalled wrapping Hal’s twisted ankle, holding the high arch of his foot steady, the heel against his thigh. Hal had winced at his touch, eyes watering not from any pain but from the weight of all that had occurred. His mobility would become the hourglass of that precious time, up until the moment Dave found him as warmly-dressed and packed up as he could be, asking for a ride to town.

Dave wasn’t in the business of protecting people. If Otacon had come out of Shadow Moses alive due to his actions, that was incidental. Tending his injuries, offering his bed and clothing - he was as clumsy and untried in these acts as Hal might have been with a weapon. His dogs had crowded Hal at the kitchen table, mannerless with excitement. They could approach him in a way Dave could not - unselfconscious, secure in their entitlement to his affection.

“Do you think people are really capable of change?” he’d asked of Hal, pretending at docility with his cable-knit sweater and his house shoes, blood still drying beneath his nails in gritty crescent moons.

“I want to believe that,” Hal said. His hair was on the scruffy side of long, and he badly needed a shave. Without his lab coat, Dave could see the thin bones of his shoulders through his borrowed shirt.

“But you don’t,” Dave inferred.

“I want to. I want to think there’s hope for people like me. That there’s enough good I could do to make up for things.”

Dave didn’t know what he meant by that. Whatever Otacon had done, even unintentionally, must be pennies compared to Snake’s karmic debt.

“Maybe it’s about more than weighing everything up,” Dave posited then, vaguely recalling stories of feathers and balance scales. “Everything’s a matter of perspective.”

The crack of gunfire shattered through the trees, strangely softened by the tall snowbanks. Two day-bags were nestled side-by-side at the base of a pine tree, olive drab and sky blue.

“Again. Squeeze, don’t pull. Eyes open.”

Dave sidled up to Hal, making adjustments to the set of his shoulders and kicking at his feet until he shuffled them into a more stable position.

“Clear.”

Hal still flinched at the sound, despite the earmuffs, but he took the kick remarkably well. His wrists were trembling, not with fear or nerves but with exhaustion. A hole appeared remarkably near the center of the cardboard target.

“Good shot.” Dave murmured, and clapped him on the shoulder. Hal was starting to look like he knew what to do with the gun - his hands looked thin but strong around the grip, and his eyes had sharpened quickly.

“Can I do a few more?” Hal asked, oddly serious. He studiously trained the barrel low as he turned to ask.

“Finish out the clip,” Dave offered. With a rookie of Hal’s proficiency, he might take this time to pack up what he safely could or go have a smoke.

He didn’t do any of that. He stayed at Hal’s shoulder and watched.

The man who’d pissed himself in front of Grey Fox, who cried at the death of an enemy - that was the Hal he knew best. The man who felt obligated to right the wrongs he’d helped to bring into this world for people he’d never meet, whose tenderness could bear strength with the right cultivation.

This was something new. Dave peered past his own fogging breath. Hal took each shot at his natural pace, worked with his own body as Dave instructed him, wasn’t afraid of what he was holding. A thought wandered suddenly into the foreground: ‘I don’t want him to be afraid of me.’

He was using a piece from Dave’s gun locker, something well-selected and cared for. In his hands, it had killed more people than Hal had possibly ever befriended. There were boundaries around killing, lines Snake had crossed over and over again in a past life and in this one. Hal was preparing to toe it if necessary. Snake wanted to shake him, demand to know why. When he thought about people wanting to hurt Hal, or succeeding, something ugly and hungry inside him reared its head.

Hal cleared the chamber like Snake showed him, gave the gun and the empty clip back separately.

“You’re going to want to use the grip trainer,” Snake told him. “It’ll help with your endurance.”

Otacon considered the grim implications of that, rubbing at his wrists and the meat of his thumb joint. He nodded.

He’d been the one to ask. Dave would have shown him anything he wanted - CQC, knifework, judo - maybe insisted on the basics. But Hal had beat him to it, firm-footed and deliberately not fidgeting in Dave’s kitchen that morning.

“Any reason you’ve been so serious about this?” he couldn’t help asking. The gun came apart under his hands, each piece returned to its place in the open foam case. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I want to be a good partner for you.”

Dave had to look up at the earnestness in Hal’s voice. He might have guessed something like ‘I don’t want to get popped if someone sees through my octo-camo’ or ‘I want a backup plan if dark assassins find my apartment while I’m home’. He hadn’t expected this.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Hal winced. “I just. There it is. I don’t want you to worry about me when things start going down.You shouldn’t have to save me every time.”

‘I enjoy worrying about you’ wasn’t an appropriate response here, so Snake did his best to firmly nod. He gave himself a moment to think of something by latching the gun case and standing up to meet Hal’s eye level. He put his hand on Hal’s shoulder.

“You’ll do great.”

Sometimes Dave forgot that this place was meant to be his home, not just a place to lay low and pretend he was retired. There were no photographs on the walls or keepsakes above the fireplace, and with the generator shut down for the evening Hal was forced to seek his entertainment from the available company.

They spoke in the close dark. Flickering candlelight warped around Hal’s features. Dave’s sweater slid and bunched at the collar, over-large on Hal.

“You don’t seem nervous about it. Philanthropy.”

“Should I be?”

Hal looked at him from across the sofa, over the double mountain range of their knees.

“I don’t want you to be, if you are. And if you’re not…” Hal shrugged.

“I’m not.” Dave’s fingers flinched, itching to hold a cigarette. “I trust you.”

“Just like that?”

Dave shrugged.

“You’ve never lied to me. I’d know if you had lied to me.”

“You can ask me, you know. Anything you want,” Hal offered. His eyes drifted to their knees and then back up to Dave’s face, oddly shy.

“What do you want me to ask you?” Dave said.

“Just, whatever,” Hal said, evasive. “If there was something…”

“Why did you--” Dave started, and then changed tack. “What were you doing the last six months?”

“Thinking. Monitoring for info leaks. Lots of thinking.”

“What about?”

“You, mostly. Me, a lot.”

“You and me, huh? Does that mean what it sounds like?” Dave couldn’t resist teasing. Hal didn’t take the bait.

“Do you really want to know the answer to that?” he said, mouth twisting.

“You said I could ask you anything,” Dave replied, a little reckless. He leaned over his knees, not quite into Hal’s space.

“Yes.” Hal said, simply. Dave didn’t need to clarify which question he was responding to.

“Are you gonna do anything about it?”

“What,” Hal said, stupidly. Dave tucked his knees underneath him and pushed Hal’s apart.

“You heard me. I trust you, Hal. No more secrets.”

“What do you think I should do about it?” Hal’s voice wavered.

“You’re calling the shots now, partner. You’re the one who said I was good for more than just sneaking around.”

Hal’s head thunked against the thinly padded arm of the couch. “I can’t believe this is happening. Did I die trying to hike up here yesterday? This is a hypothermia-induced hallucination, right?”

Dave slid his hands along Hal’s thighs, hooked his fingers under his knees and pulled just enough to slide him closer.

“Oh God,” Hal blurted.

“I think you should fuck me,” Dave said.

“Nghk,” said Hal. His cheeks pinked under his hands, fingers pressed against his eyes beneath his glasses.

“You’re not scared, are you?”

“No!”

Dave hissed in amusement. He took one of Hal’s hands, practically bird-boned compared to his, and pressed it to his chest. Two of Hal’s fingers slipped between the buttons of his flannel, flirting with the warm skin underneath.

“Then tell me how you want me.”

Now that he was allowed to look with impunity, Hal was really making up for lost time. Dave saw himself for a moment as Hal must - muscled and scruffy, hard-edged but familiar. It was better than how he usually saw himself. He let Hal drink his fill without comment, maybe flexing here or there just to see a fresh wash of appreciation on his face. Eventually Hal’s eyes came back to his. “Dave… you want this, right? Stupid question, I know.”

Dave sighed. It was simple work for him to reverse their positions - Hal sprawled over his chest, his hair spilling down around Dave’s face. Dave took his glasses and set them on the coffee table so that he could more comfortably squeeze Hal close, tucking him up under his chin, digging his fingers into his hair for the hell of it.

“I’m not good with this type of thing. Just stay for a minute and listen.”

Hal waited. His breath became damp and steady at the side of Dave’s neck. Their thighs slotted together comfortably.

“Thought about you every day.”

Hal’s sudden inhale was cool against his skin, and his ribs expanded under Dave’s arm.

“I used to follow orders because I thought I was fighting for the right stuff. That the guys at the top knew what they stood for. We both know that’s bullshit.”

He pressed his face to Hal’s hair for a moment.

“You,” he swallowed, “you want to see the good in people. In me. I didn’t know what that was like before you. You make me want to be that way.”

“You’re already that way,” Hal said, tipping his nose up under Dave’s chin. “You don’t need to change. Not for me.”

“We can agree to disagree,” Dave grunted.

“I mean, I’m not about to complain if you want to be good for me,” Hal teased, leaning up to grin at him. Dave couldn’t hide his expression fast enough. “Oh.”

Hal took in the quick motion of his throat, the crease between his brows, the rising flush at the base of his neck. He took Dave’s hands in his, feeling his gun calluses and blunted nails, and drew them up over the arm of the couch until Dave’s torso stretched out below him.

“I can’t hold you down,” Hal admitted, “but I don’t think I need to. You’ll stay like this for me, won’t you? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Dave could throw him off the couch three or four different ways, maybe five if he wanted to get creative. Hal was devastatingly correct - Dave wanted to stay there, pinned by his own curiosity at the very least.

“You don’t need to prove anything to me,” Hal said, and Dave started to squirm threateningly. Hal pressed a hand over his mouth and Dave’s squirming turned into grinding. “Shut up.”

Dave wanted to roll his eyes. He kept them on Hal instead, unable to look anywhere else. His body wouldn’t relax, too accustomed to reacting violently against physical vulnerability.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” Hal said, just the truth. “You could, but you won’t. You’re not a machine, Dave.”

He huffed, breath whistling out of his nose, stymied by the edge of Hal’s palm. His shoulders sank slightly. Hal’s other hand worked at the buttons of his shirt, revealing Dave’s firm chest and trembling belly by increments. His fingers combed experimentally through the soft fur there, thickest at Dave’s sternum.

Maybe it was his tender expression, or his exploratory touch - Dave wasn’t certain why he flushed so intensely, reddening under Hal’s palm all the way down to the center of his chest. He wanted Hal to look over the rest of him like that, with a simple and nearly innocent fascination. He wanted him to like what he saw.

Hal did. He expressed as much by opening up Dave’s shirt and pressing his hand against the curves of his ribs, the terrain of his abs, the warm hollow under each arm.

Dave was used to considering his body in terms of what it could do - wait with stillness, crush windpipes, pull triggers. Hal knew it. Their plans revolved around that knowledge, the concept that Dave would do any and all of those things in pursuit of Hal’s vision. He wanted that usefulness. What Hal offered him now was something else, a new purpose. The tense chain of muscles along his spine softened with that thought, giving way under Hal’s wandering touch.

“There we go,” he murmured. His hand came away from Dave’s face, leaving a rush of cool air in its place. Dave wanted it back immediately. He wanted Hal’s fingers in his mouth, or around his throat. He gripped the couch frame with both hands.

“Don’t stop touching me,” he managed, too keyed up for any embarrassment. Hal sucked in a breath. When he leaned back, his ass fit neatly into the cradle of Dave’s hips - Dave wasn’t hard yet, and hadn’t realized it. Whatever he was experiencing wasn’t precisely arousal, but something just as keen and heady.  
  
Hal swallowed, the click of his throat audible. “I thought I was supposed to call the shots.”

“Then start calling some,” Dave gritted, feeling like he might go feral if Hal kept his hands to himself any longer. “You said it yourself, you can’t hold me down.”

“I don’t want to do the wrong thing,” Hal admitted.

“You can’t,” Dave snarled. “It’s you.” His triceps strained with the effort of keeping still. Hal watched him suffer for a moment, either out of indecision or feigned indifference. Dave didn’t care as long as he kept watching.

Hal’s hands went to his own belt. Dave’s mouth went dry. “Yeah,” he breathed, pressing up into Hal’s weight just to feel him there.

“Hold still,” Hal snipped, loosening his flies. He pushed the elastic band of his boxers low - Dave watched the reveal hungrily, noting how the trail of fine hair from Hal’s belly button thickened and darkened.

The sheer novelty of seeing Hal’s cock had Dave panting. He speculated wildly on what Hal intended to do with it, displeased by nothing he could imagine. Hal reflexively lifted the front of his shirt out of the way, gave his length a habitual stroke. A groan rumbled out of Dave’s chest.

“I could just take care of myself and leave you here,” Hal suggested. Dave pictured it immediately - the motion Hal’s hand, feeling the tensing of his thighs, watching his face, letting his come cool on Dave’s abs. He couldn’t restrain his growling approval.

Hal laughed. “Oh, you’re one of those people?”

“Says the guy who just offered to let me watch,” Dave quipped.

“This is just like in Ghostbusters,” Hal observed, and instead of elaborating he scooted forward to rub his cock over Dave’s stomach. The wet tip caught and then slid over Dave’s dry skin, but the length was blood-hot and silky. Hal pressed himself between his hand and Dave, and began to move in the warm space he’d created.

Dave could do nothing further to assist. The idea that this was all Hal wanted from him - his compliance, his faith, his body - was unique enough to be thrilling. His fingertips dug hard into the upholstery, creaking threads. Maybe it was fortunate that Hal demanded nothing further, as he couldn’t manage much else.

“You’re so fucking loud,” Hal groaned, and Dave realized he was right. Hal smothered his mouth with his free hand, less neatly than before. His fingers sprawled up on either side of Dave’s nose, thumb pressed into the soft space above his stubbled jaw.

“Aren’t you supposed to be good at being quiet?” Hal hissed, rolling his hips more luxuriously. “I’m not even fucking you yet.”

‘What if,’ Dave thought. Hal was using him with such self-indulgence - he helplessly imagined putting himself even further at his mercy, pinned and overstimulated and spread out for Hal’s enjoyment.

“Christ,” Hal groaned, watching the thought pass over Dave’s face. “Good thing I don’t need to try to hold out for that. You told me what you wanted though, didn’t you?”

Hal was too light to really crush him, but as he moved to wedge his knees up under Dave’s arms, Dave wanted him to try. The hand on his face slid up and into his hair. He watched the graceless motion of Hal’s hand around his cock at an eye-crossing distance, sympathetic to the catch of his thumb under the head and his stuttering hips. Dave knew biologically what would happen, and yet the realization was far off until he saw the ominous slowing of Hal’s grip.

“Do it,” Dave rasped, opening his mouth hopefully. Hal made a wounded sound above him, gaze wandering from Dave’s dark eyes to his pink tongue.

“Fuck, Dave-” Hal’s breath shook. Dave watched the first milky bead emerge, framed by the tunnel of Hal’s thumb and fingers. The sharp taste of it brought saliva rushing up under his tongue. There was more than he expected - in his mouth, on his cheek, chin, neck. The inevitable comparison to the sensation of blood spatter drifted through his mind and was allowed to pass through unobstructed. He clung instead to the strong scent, Hal’s ragged breathing, the fingers rubbing appreciatively at his scalp.

The taste turned bitter at the back of his throat. Hal wiped at the stray wetness on his face and ended up smearing it into a thin, tacky layer instead of anything truly helpful.

“You’re so-” Hal tried, before his throat seemed to close up. Dave caught his thumb with a turn of his head, lapping at the rough pad of it. “Jeez. That’s all for me, huh?”

Dave didn’t answer, oddly fuck-drunk despite a quantifiable lack of action. Hal scooted back, not unawkwardly, and leaned down to replace his thumb with his lips. Despite the pins and needles in his hands, Dave obligingly wrapped him close, licking into his mouth. Gradually the kiss settled into something simpler and sweeter, even with Hal’s fly open and his come drying on Dave’s neck.

“I’ve never been,” Dave started. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Any of it?” Hal asked, tucking himself back into the space under Dave’s jaw. If his slow, sucking kisses had an ulterior purpose, he wouldn’t say. Dave shivered lightly.

“Not really.”

Hal’s hand brushed along the median of his torso. Dave felt like his skin was leaping up to meet his touch, dog-eager.

“I thought I was going to ruin everything,” Hal said, and for a moment Dave tried fruitlessly to fit this comment into the previous thread of their conversation. “After Shadow Moses. S’why I left.”

Dave frowned, arms tightening around Hal’s thin shoulders.

“You were so kind to me. I’m bad luck for people like that. I needed the time to be someone you could trust.”

“You already were that,” Dave murmured, hoping Hal wouldn’t give him his own response back.

“I had the potential to be that,” Hal obliquely agreed. “That’s what you showed me. That’s why I believe what I do about you.”

His hands tracked along the bones of Hal’s spine, slipped under his shirt, and retraced their journey against bare skin. He spanned them at his waist, a measurement worthless to anyone else.

“Alright then,” he sighed, nosing into Hal’s hair. “Maybe I’m good for two things.”


End file.
